Stone Soup
by hawaii5063
Summary: A fairytale challenge story. Severus Snape and Remus Lupin star in "Stone Soup". A little bit silly, and very short. Enjoy.


This was a challenge story. The parameters were to simply take some HP characters and insert them into a fairytale. I chose more of a folktale though. It is a one shot fic, and a little bit silly. I hope you enjoy it.

-Hawaii

Stone Soup

(Or How to Deal With An Average Flobberworm)

Once upon a time, two men were making their way back to Britain after a long and difficult war. The men were wizards, but as apparition was disallowed until the remainder of the Death Eaters were apprehended, and floo powder was nearly impossible to come by, they were making their way to the English Channel by hitching rides - muggle town by muggle town. This did not bother the first wizard, Remus Lupin, as he had done much traveling this way in the past, but it did absolutely nothing to improve the fairly rotten personality of his traveling companion, Severus Snape. Nor did the fact that neither of them had been able to garner a proper meal in several days.

"Tell me again," snarled Snape, an instructor at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, and a certified Potions Master, as he clambered out of the back of an ancient cold war era Hungarian pick-up truck, "why we can't just rob their houses and obliviate their useless minds?"

Remus sighed. "Severus, war heroes don't do well in Azkaban. Especially ones that 'played for the other team.'"

Remus' double entendre concerning the conditions at the wizarding prison of Azkaban was not lost on Snape, who still scowling, made his way into the center of the small Eastern European muggle village. 

They looked around a bit but saw no simple avenues to earn a meal. They also knew  that the inhabitants were unlikely to share what little they had with them as the wizarding war had brought about terrible economic conditions in the muggle world  (though most European muggles were divided on whether to blame the situation on either the Americans or the Japanese).

"I hate to say it, Severus," said Lupin with a sigh, "but we may need to steal food. I am getting weak and I won't be able to keep this traveling up much longer. If we don't get to France at least in the next week, I won't be able to get the Wolfsbane potion in time. And you know what that means."

"I would have to kill you," responded Severus with a hint of a smirk.

At Remus' horrified look, Snape scowled. "Oh stop your theatrics already. We'll trick them out of food for Merlin's sake. They are _muggles_ after all. A flobberworm is the intellectual equal to the average muggle, which means half of them are even dumber than that."

"Muggles or Flobberworms?"

"Shut up, Lupin."

The two made their way to the small town square. Snape took a tiny cauldron from his pocket and stepping behind a tree, enlarged it. He filled the cauldron with water from a nearby pump and dragged it to the center of the green. He then sent Remus to gather some wood with which he surreptitiously began a fire. Within the half hour, a small crowd of people had gathered nearby, watching the strange visitors, and muttering amongst each other.

"What now?" asked Remus, his hunger driving his impatience.

"Now we get their attention."

"How? All we have is a big, black cauldron filled with water."

Severus shook his head in disgust. "All I ever have is a 'big, black cauldron' at Hogwarts, and I manage to get the attention of the little dunderheads just fine," he sneered. "Watch and learn, werewolf."

Lupin ignored the insult, since it was after all accurate, and simply watched.

Snape dug into his pocket and pulled out a small velvet bag, which had once contained an important message for the European Resistance and had been carried by him for safe keeping. Now it contained a small stone he had picked up a few minutes earlier.

He held up the stone in the sunlight, as if to see it better. He then patted his stomach in full theatrical style, licked his lips a few times, and plastered a big grin onto his face.

Remus nearly died on the spot. 

To finish his little display off, he said loudly "Yum, yum, Stone Soup. We will eat well tonight." Their translator spell kicked in automatically.

Remus looked around quickly. Surely some version of Hungarian mental health healers would descend on them momentarily and drag them off to a muggle St. Mungos? But no, the people were actually coming closer, curious looks on their faces.

Snape smiled at the muggles and then ceremoniously dropped the stone into the water with a small splash.

A nearby woman took a few steps forward and peered into the cauldron and sniffed the "broth".

"What is it?" she asked tentatively. 

"Why madam, it is Stone Soup. The finest soup in the world. Of course Stone Soup with cabbage, that is even better." He began to stir the soup with his wand, clearly ignoring the fact that he had just contradicted himself in the last two sentences. 

A man in the growing crowd shouted out, "I have some cabbage. I'll be right back."

Severus smiled to the crowd. "Excellent, excellent. I once had Stone Soup with cabbage and a bit of beef too. Fit for a king it was."

A moment later an offer of a small quantity of beef was forthcoming. 

Remus shook his head. He wondered if perhaps he was lying delirious in some Death Eater torture chamber, overtaken with hallucinations. The war was not really over. Not if Severus Snape was grinning like an idiot at a crowd of muggles.

"Well now, a few carrots and this soup will be magical."

And on and on it went like this, through potatoes, pasta, onions, tomatoes, mushrooms and even some bread and beer to round out the meal. When Severus was done the soup smelled wonderful and the whole village had seemingly turned out to see this incredible culinary creation.

Severus and Remus of course where given the first bowlfuls, and thanks to some tricky fast talking on the part of Severus, they also had the final bowlfuls. By the end of the evening they were both stuffed. They accepted an offer of a place to stay for the night and a ride to the Austrian border in the morning. The only downside was that they couldn't shrink the cauldron, though one of the pretty town girls offered to wash it out for them, all the while winking in Severus' direction.

That night as they fell asleep in the small guest room of the town mayor, Remus ventured a philosophical question of his companion.

"Severus? Did you see what the power of sharing, and working together with muggles can be? From a stone you fed an entire town!"

"I did not feed an entire town. They fed themselves. They were just too idiotic to figure it out."

"Hmm…not like wizards who _always_ work together you mean."

"Shut up Lupin, and go to sleep."

For a few minutes there was silence. Then Remus spoke again softly.

 "Severus?"

Snape gritted his teeth but knew he would get no sleep until Lupin had his say. "What is it now?" he growled.

"Will you make porridge for us in the morning?"

The End


End file.
